These Prada shoes are Pulitzer worthy

A few months later, I had just finished my class at NYU. I was an adjunct professor in New York, shuttling between teaching at three or four schools. I’m sitting on West Fourth Metro grading papers because that’s what you do when you teach part-time. I have the shoes with me because they cost about $1100 and I want to preserve them by putting taps (sole protectors) on them. The train arrives, which I didn’t see coming because I was judging, and I rush on. Then I realize I don’t have the bag with the shoes. I get off at the next station and go back, but it’s gone. It hurt.

When my next book, Survival Math, came out in 2019, I got the Prada studded lace-ups you see here. I thought, “Oh, here’s another pair.” Fast forward to 2021 and I had won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. I wore these shoes during the ceremony. I could have bought a few new ones, but they were important to me. It felt like all the stress I had losing that first pair made them special.

During the ceremony they had folding chairs, and because I’m quite tall, my feet were under the person in front of me. They call my name and I go to receive my award. As I sit back down, the man in front of me turns and says, “Mitch? Man, I couldn’t stop looking at these shoes.” It was Jake Silverstein, the editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine. Here’s a man I really respect speaking to me at the Pulitzer ceremony. And he doesn’t say, “Congratulations on the Pulitzer.” He turns around and says, “Man, those are great shoes.”